Edorble – A 3D Virtual Classroom

I’ve been interested in 3D virtual worlds for teaching since I first worked in Second Life designing courses back in 2007. I’ve always believed that they could add a really valuable dimension to online learning and help students to overcome the sense of isolation that often leads students to lose motivation and drop out of online courses.

I was delighted when I first saw Edorble because I felt it offered the opportunity for any teacher to set up their own 3D virtual classroom and start teaching online for free.

How do you create a 3D virtual classroom?

Go to: http://edorble.com/ and click on Claim World. This will take you to a sign up page. There you can register with your email address or one of your social media accounts.

You will then need to download the Edorble application. Also make a note of your code. This is the unique number that helps you and your students to enter your room.

Once you have downloaded the app you simply open it (you might have to check for updates) then you should see the entrance to your private 3D world.

Before entering you can click on the cog in the lower left corner to open the admin panel. This allows you to see the instructions for how you move around the world, put up your hand, sit down extra.

You can also change some of the settings that effect the performance of the world. You can set the video screen to fast if you are running an older computer on a slower internet connection. This will make the world less detailed and beautiful, but it will save on processor power and bandwidth.

Once you click the arrow to enter the world you’ll be able to do some minimal customisation on your avatar and add your name. once that’s done you are ready to go, so just click the arrow and tick.

Once you are in the world you can just click on the place you want your avatar to move to, so no need to use arrow keys. You can then start to explore the various parts of your world.

There is a great auditorium with a whiteboard screen. You can upload documents from Dropbox, Google Docs or watch videos from YouTube here and share them with your students and read through or watch together. If you have accounts on Zaption or Blendspace you can access any video based materials you have created there. You can also access websites and search the internet.

There are a number of breakout areas around the Edorble world that students can go to to do group or pair work and they also have access to various screens to work on. These screens can also be used to access simple online whiteboards so you can get students to draw and write on them.

Of course all of this is great, but the best part of Edorble is that students can stroll around and communicate freely much as they would in a physical space. Edorble is a great addition to any online course and can be used to add a social element or for instruction or group or project work. Your virtual classroom is always open so you don’t have to be there for students to access the world, they can meet there autonomously.

Things to be aware of

Make sure that the first time students use the world they will need to download and install it and it may take a bit longer to update and load.

Reinforce with your students that they must wear headphones and if possible use and external microphone, not the one built into their laptop. This will help everyone get the best sound quality. People who use onboard microphones and speakers will cause a lot of feedback and background noise for other users.

Things I like about Edorble

One of the great things about Edorble is that audio is proximity sensitive so it can be set up so that students don’t hear each other unless they reasonably close together.

Edorble was designed and is being developed specifically for education.

You get your own private world so students should be safe there and you don’t have any of the problems associated with Second Life.

You can switch back the detail and enable Edorble to run on more limited connectivity.

You can have groups of up to 100 students in the world at the same time.

How does Edorble stay free?

We all know that any company, even educational ones need to make money and generate income from somewhere. Edorble generates income from creating white-label worlds so that schools can have their own branded classrooms and from building bespoke worlds that can be anything you can imagine. So do get in touch with Edorble if you’d like a custom-built online world for your students.